Note: This article was originally published in The Technology Source (http://ts.mivu.org/) as: Dirk Rodenburg "Web-based Learning: Extending the Paradigm" The Technology Source, November/December 1999. Available online at http://ts.mivu.org/default.asp?show=article&id=1034. The article is reprinted here with permission of the publisher.

Although Web-based learning has been touted as a panacea
for many training and educational needs, the reality is that results can fall dramatically
short of expectations. Unfortunately, dominant conceptions of Web-based instruction for
many organizations are primarily driven or shaped by IT personnel and departments, not by
educators. In my work, servicing a primarily corporate clientele, this is often the case.

Those issues that are educational in naturesuch as sustainable content management,
sound pedagogical strategy, and learner supportare all too often left in the periphery.
I'd like to discuss some ways in which the discussion around learning technology can be
broadened to include a more critical, more effective approach to design and implementation.

The Challenge: Using the Technology Appropriately

Education is a complicated construct. The vast range of competing perspectives offers
many different, legitimate ways of characterizing process and outcomes (Pratt, 1998). The
problem for the designers of a technology-based learning strategy is defining an
instructional paradigm that is contextually appropriate and instructionally sound from
this myriad of conceptual frameworks. In my experience, many Web-based learning
environments do not reflect a coherent and carefully considered instructional
approach. More often than not, the developers of technology-based learning environments
make the following assumptions, which are not supported by research:

Learning efficacy is related to the amount and visual richness of the media provided

Access to information is the same as instruction

Simple "ad-hoc" assessment is usually a reliable indicator of learning outcomes

Media and Learning

Research into the impact of media on learning outcomes
does not support an unequivocal endorsement of a "technology" or
"media-centric" approach (Clark, 1985, 1987). Ive found that many
technology learning initiatives support an uncritical
acceptance of the following relationship:

The value of novelty (which is often used as a rationale
for the inclusion of more band-width intensive media"Weve got to get them
excited!") is not sufficient to provide sustained instructional efficacy. What does
contribute to instructional efficacy is the contextual appropriateness of the media used
and the ways in which the learners engage with that media, in terms of the stated
learning objectives.

Contextual Appropriateness of Media

Contextual appropriateness within a Web-based learning
environment is related to a number of issues, some of which include:

What level of representation is appropriate for the
learning objectives? In some cases, a simple conceptual diagram will suffice. In
others, dynamic representations of process flow or variable interaction are important. In
others, a narrative or story coupled with specific imagery is crucial to help learners
understand the impact of macro forces at the micro level, or to foster personal engagement
with the issues under discussion.

How can the media utilized be provided in a manner
that fosters, not hinders, the learning experience? This issue is in part technical
and in part design-related. If download or access times are
prohibitive, learners will experience frustration. If the media is abstracted too much
from the context in which it is meant to be supportive (i.e. downloaded and viewed later,
or launched through a separate proprietary set of applications), learners will lose the
connection between context and media element.

How can the media utilized be effectively presented? This
is also an issue that is both technical and design-related. For example, in many contexts, a "layered" delivery of an image or
diagram (through channels like "FLASH" or DHTML) is a bandwidth
conservative method for representing changes in structure resulting from changes to a
single variable or a combination of variables.

Learner Interaction with Media

The ways in which the learner will engage with the supporting media is a second
important consideration with two associated issues:

To what extent can the learner control the presentation of the media to match his/her
needs? Lets look at a simple example, online video. In my experience, many
Web-based learning approaches assume that inclusion of a supporting video resource
is sufficient to provide effective instructional support. Depending on context, that can
be true. But the use of online video can often be augmented to provide more effective, better-targeted instructional
support. For example, an online video resource can be segmented into topics or concepts or
can be linked to keywords (or metatags) and instructional/curricular goals. In this way,
direct, nonlinear access to specific segments of interest can be provided to support or
help resolve conceptual difficulties.

How can media be structured to allow the learner to interact with and/or self-discover
underlying principles, models, and causal relationships? Using online video as an
example again, a specific event can be shown from a number of different perspectives
(cultural, sociological, economic, age, role, disability, and so on), or as a consequence
of a specific conceptual model ("What happens to the ball in a vacuum when it is no
longer pushed? What about the same situation in normal atmosphere?"). By providing a
method by which each (competing) perspective can easily be comparatively viewed, or each predicted
outcome tested, learners can begin to formulate, articulate and test new conceptual
frameworks.

Instruction and Access to Information

Providing access to information is not the same as
teaching, but this distinction is often blurred by developers of Web-based learning
programs. In fact, simply providing access to information can, in some cases, do more
damage than good. Learners can experience anger, resentment and frustration if mechanisms
for distribution, access, and learning do not meet expectations.

Constructing meaningful representations of knowledge
takes time, commitment, and an appropriate level of organizational/institutional
support. Design goals should include helping the learner to:

Understand, reiterate, consolidate, and review the overall
constructs of the learning material

Discriminate between material essential for understanding
those constructs and material presented as adjunctive explanations or resources

Many of these techniques are currently used within the
context of print (e.g. textbooks), but Web technology offers the added dimension of the
ability to respond dynamically to
learner choice.

For example, few Web-based learning applications attempt
to provide consistent, easily accessed, and well-structured ways in which the following
questions can be answered:

What are the overall objectives of the material Im
now covering?

How does the information Im reviewing now fit into
those overall objectives?

What have I covered so far?

What do I still have to cover?

How am I thinking about this material?

How do other learners typically think about this material,
and how well do those ways of thinking map to my own?

What are some of the consequences of each way of thinking
about the material?

What are some of the typical misconceptions that learners
have as they study this material?

What are better ways of thinking about this material that
are tied to those misconceptions?

How is what Im learning now going to help me deal
with later material?

Whats essential for me to pay attention to right
now, and whats important for later?

Assessment: A Tool for Instruction and Measurement

Web-based learning approaches often use a
paradigm that completely separates learning material and assessment. The typical learner
experience is to "cover" a specific learning module and then immediately
complete a short assessment process (usually multiple choice) that tests for immediate
recall of the information. The learner is then free to return to the module or move on to
the next based on performance within the assessment. This vision of assessment has some
serious instructional shortcomings (Elstein, 1994, Ramsden, 1993, Page, 1995, White and
Gunstone, 1992).

A more integrated approach would be to include assessment
within the instructional process. For example, after a new concept has been presented,
learners could predict the consequences of a range of variables applied to a theoretical
model, or pick a way of thinking about the problem domain that best matches their own, or
both. The feedback generated by these choices could provide
some insight into (and therefore the potential for developing a diagnostic framework for)
the way in which the learner is conceptualizing the material. These "instructional
assessments" within the instructional material can help the learner articulate the
way in which he/she is thinking about the problem (meta-cognition)
and understand the predictive value or short comings of that approach, as well as the
degree to which it generally accounts for the problem domain.

One way to develop this kind of "embedded"
feedback is to involve teachers who have experience teaching the specific topic under
consideration. Content expertise is one thing; pedagogical expertise within
a specific domain space is another (Pratt, 1998). Teachers can help identify specific
points at which learners typically encounter difficulty, and, equally importantly,
describe misconceptions that are often carried by learners. The instructional material and
assessment and feedback mechanisms can then be designed to anticipate common needs.

Wrong answers should not be treated as wrong answers ("there are never stupid
questions, only stupid answers"). They are pointers that show how the
learner conceptualizes the instructional material and that can help designers plan
targeted instructional support.

Objectives for Online Design

Online learning design should do more than provide access to information; it
should support the following processes:

Clark, R. E. (1987). Which technology for what
purpose? The state of the argument about research on learning from media . Paper
presented at the annual conference of the Association for Educational Communications and
Technology, Atlanta, GA.